Celebrating Bill

20 years ago today, I became a big sister.  Since then, I've had the great privilege of watching Helena grow up, seeing her change from my baby sister to the diva of the family to warrior woman on the field.  I got to see her blossom into this beautiful, graceful, compassionate woman who cares deeply for others and constantly encourages everyone around her.  She is a truly "accomplished" woman (yes, we both love Pride and Prejudice...) - she reads extensively (as a nursing student, there's no avoiding that...), speaks Spanish, super smart, a formidable opponent on the lacrosse field, sings beautifully, has this talent with music and piano skills that I'm totally jealous of, her doodles look like those really cool patterns you find on southern-belle type fashion accessories, and she's got the magic touch when it comes to baking.  No joke.  If you ever get the chance, ask her to bake you a chess pie.  It's incredible.

So today, I'm celebrating Helena - Bill, as we call her.  She is a joy in my life, and I'm really excited to see where she goes after college as she continues to grow and become an awesome nurse.

Bill -thanks for being my totally cool, goofy, little sister and being willing to pretend like you're still shorter than me in our family pictures even though you've got a good 3 inches on me....  Have a wonderful 20th birthday!!!!

Tenting on the ol' campground

After we got engaged, one of the first things I did was register for a KitchenAid Artisan mixer, since you know, those things are awesome.  Right after that, I registered for a two person sleeping bag.  Jeff and I both really enjoy doing outdoorsy stuff, like hiking and camping.  We were given some great gifts - a super light two-person backpacking tent, a two-person sleeping bag, a two-person Eno hammock....  I sense a theme.

So this past weekend, we packed up our awesome new gear and set out for the Eno River State Park to camp out for the night.  We parked and hiked a little over a mile in to our campsite, which had a tent pad and a fire ring and a bench, and it was set back away from the others.  We were near a creek and the river, and since Jeff has this nifty water filter bottle, we got all of our water from the river.

setting up the campsite

It was wonderful to enjoy the sunshine and the green trees and the quiet and calm of the forest, just the two of us.  However, it got pretty cold pretty fast, eventually reaching 37 degrees in the early hours of the morning.  Cold!  I was not quite as prepared with my clothing options as I should have been, but now I know...  The next morning, we made ourselves hot apple cider and scrambled eggs for breakfast in our little cooking stove, and then hung out in the hammock for a bit before we packed up and hiked back out along the river.  There were a ton of turtles hanging out!  The water was really clear too, so we could see the occasional fish swimming around as we walked past.  All in all, a really nice trip!

our awesome new tent

yay trees!

that's our two-person sleeping bag in there...

our Eno doublenest hammock

camp fires!

setting up the camping stove

turtle!

Decorating With Crafty Things, Pt 2

So last semester, I wanted to hang pictures on my wall with twine and mini-clothespins.  It looked like this:

And then I saw these really cute pictures on Pinterest of banners on tables at wedding receptions.  I thought it would be cool to mesh the ideas, and what I came up with was twine, mini-clothespins, and burlap squares with painted letters on them.  I ordered the burlap, but totally ordered the wrong color by accident.  I was surprised when I opened the box to find a light green colored burlap.  But I figured since we were doing outdoorsy type decorations, with trees and all, that green would work just fine.  I got some brown paint, and started painting letters.  Maya was here helping out, she cut all the squares.  As we finished the squares, we strung them up in the kitchen to dry.

And they ended up looking like this:

The other big project was making the signs.  There were 5 signs - "Gifts" (which you can see above) , "How sweet it is to be loved by you" (on the sweets table), "Mr" and "Mrs" (to go on either side of the bride and groom's table), and "Here comes the bride" (to be carried by our ring bearer).  I decided I didn't want Landon, Jeff's nephew, to carry a pillow down the aisle, and I had seen this cute idea of a "Here comes the bride" sign from Rachael and Geoff's wedding (of Geoff Duncan Photography).  So I went to Habitat for Humanity's Restore, and bought pieces of do-it-yourself hardwood flooring, painted them white, sanded off a bunch of paint for a distressed look, and painted words on them in teal paint.

painting on the kitchen floor 

the signs, pre-sanding 

Landon! 

how sweet it is.... to eat lots of candy :)

Decorating With Crafty Things, Pt. 1

One of my absolute favorite parts of planning the wedding: the decorations.  Also known as crafty play time....  I love making crafty things - whether it was painting tshirts, or stenciling animals on my bedroom walls, or moving overseas to learn a language so I could write the beautiful script, it was all lots of fun for me!  So after deciding that I'd make most of the decorations myself, things really got interesting.  I spent way too much time trolling on pinterest for ideas instead of listening to lectures, read a lot of wedding blogs and DIY blogs and craft blogs... I felt completely justified in it though, because in the long run, making my own decorations would save money and give me artistic control.  It also gave me a chance to involve some friends in the process.

So the first major decoration choice was the guest book.  I'm not really a fan of a traditional guest book, I don't feel like it's something I'd look at again.  But then I found this super cool idea of a tree trunk, and guests would use a stamp pad to put their thumbprints on the tree to make leaves and sign beneath that.  And that's exactly what I did.  I bought some heavy duty paper and a few different green ink pads, and then Maya and I painted the tree trunk.  I bought a picture frame, painted it white and sanded off the edges to give it an older, more distressed look.  I painted Jeff's and my name on the bottom, along with the date.  Viola!  Wall art/guestbook = done.

our guestbook

The next major decision was about the flowers.  After looking at fresh flower prices, I had decided not to go that way.  So I began to look for DIY flower options.  My sister actually sent me a link to this blog (www.greenweddingshoes.com), so I thought I'd check to see if there were paper flower options there.  That's where I found my flowers (you can see them pictured above).  The flowers are made out of coffee filters, wooden dowel rods, and brown tissue paper.  Several friends from church here (thank you Mary, Kristina, and Pam!) volunteered their time to help make them, and we had them all done the week before the wedding.  Unfortunately, a bunch of them  didn't take kindly to being transported cross-country in a box in the back of a car, so my sister and my cousin from Argentina were kind enough to help me fix and remake the broken ones in Texas.  The flowers were put into mason jars, which were filled with Spanish moss and wrapped with sage-colored burlap and cream ribbon.  They were used as centerpieces (placed on top of slices of tree trunks - thank you Aaron for cutting and sanding them!), and used to decorate the other main tables as well.

my cousin Fiona 

working on the flowers.  except Helena... she was doing homework.

The other major flower decisions were about the bouquets.  I knew that I wanted fresh flowers for mine, and that I wanted calla lilies and baby's breath.  But the bridesmaids bouquets were different.  I decided on silk flowers for the bridesmaids, partly because then there wouldn't be any allergy issues and partly because we could make them ahead of time.  So we got some cream colored flowers from Hobby Lobby, and each bouquet had a peony, a hydrangea, and a ranunculus.  Totally my new favorite flower ;]  We wrapped them in a sheer white ribbon, and then added a thinner teal ribbon as an accent.  I thought they looked pretty awesome!  Karen (more about her later) made them, and did an incredible job.

the bridesmaids - from left to right: Bethany, Anna Lisa, Helena, and Aisling

Planning the Wedding

Looking back at the last several months, there are a bunch of little stories that keep coming to mind.  And since many of my friends and family have no idea how this transitional planning period went down, I thought I'd share some of my favorites...  Starting with Barbara.

Barbara is an incredible woman. She has an incredible amount of joy and energy all the time, and I absolutely love being around her!  She was one of my fantastic YoungLife leaders in high school, and we've kept in touch over the years.  Well, Barbara got engaged to a pretty cool dude not long before I got engaged, so we spent quite a bit of time talking about planning and marriage counseling and relationships, and I was lucky enough to get to be at her wedding to celebrate that wonderful day :]  But one of the best things she could have told me was that this time didn't have to be stressful.  It could be completely enjoyable - a crazy adventure - I only had to choose to see it that way.  My kinda girl!  Often I'd be reminded of her words, especially when things weren't working out and I was getting stressed and overwhelmed by the thought of all that was left to be done.  It seems so small, but it made a world of difference for me.

Which brings me to the planning.  Most of the time, I really enjoyed planning our wedding.  I loved looking for creative ways to decorate, for ways to make all of my decorations, sifting through some of my favorite songs to pick out what music we'd use in the ceremony.  That was fun.  What wasn't fun though was searching for venue.  That was stressful.  Jeff's family was so kind in driving all over the place to take pictures and look at venues and report back to me.  One week got really bad.  I thought I had found the perfect place - it was secluded, this beautiful chapel with floor-to-ceiling windows all the way around, so you could see the woods surrounding the chapel... It was breath-taking.  But so was the price.  I just couldn't justify paying that much for the chapel, so I had moved on and was looking for a new place to hold the ceremony.  After nearly a week though, I hadn't found anything that looked the way I imagined, or that was within our budget.  I was frustrated and stressed and didn't know how to solve this problem, so I decided to take a break for a while.  One of the things I did on my breaks at that point was to look through the blog of this AMAZING wedding photographer - Geoff Duncan (www.geodun.com).  He does really beautiful work.  I loved looking through his posts and getting ideas for my own wedding.  That day, he posted pictures from this little historic square in McKinney - Chestnut Square.  It looked so charming and tucked away, exactly what I wanted in my venue.  I started looking into it more, called up the place to talk about prices, and got more and more excited as time passed.  It looked perfect, it was an intimate setting, within our budget, and available on the day we wanted!  So we went ahead and put down the deposit, and began to plan our wedding around this little historic square.  It may sound kind of silly, but I totally attribute finding this place to Geoff, and I'm really grateful for that post.

outside of the chapel

Chestnut Square was the perfect place for our wedding - we had a small group of people there, so we didn't need a lot of space.  There was a beautiful indoor/outdoor setting, so we could hang around outside, surrounding by budding plants and historic buildings... The chapel was simple and beautiful, and we got to use an entire historic house as the bridal suite.  It was a really fun experience for me!

Dusting off the ol' machine

When Jeff and I signed the lease for our apartment and moved my stuff in, we made a list of things we wanted to fix and change in the apartment - things like put up curtains and a curved shower rod...  At this point, we've accomplished most of things on that list, crossing yet another project off that list today.  In the kitchen, there's this counter top, and beneath it is one of the few storage places available.  But stacking things under there just looked  bad.  I wanted to sew fabric panels to hide the storage area out of my leftover fabric from reupholstering the couch.  So this afternoon, I dusted off the ol' sewing machine, took measurements, and sewed us some panels!

 yes, sewing on the floor... :)

the completed project

I really wanted to hide the one leg behind the panels, but there was no way to put a pole up and hide it, that I could figure out at least.  I think it turned out really well!  Love me some craft time...

A New Adventure

Almost two years ago, I wrote my "final" post, wrapping up one of the craziest, most action-packed, never boring chapters of my short life. My time in Jordan is something I will never forget, and my experiences there have shaped the way I view things and react to things today. I still love to talk about my adventures there, from taxi marriage proposals to 36 hour trips to Syria. But that chapter came to a close, and upon arriving in the States, I stopped writing, presumably for good.

So why start writing again? Why now?

Well, yesterday morning, I arrived at work a little before 8am. I was scheduled to work an all-day conference, and I had to be there early to set out the coffee and bagels and such, so I ran in, hopped in the elevator to put my things in the offices upstairs. Big mistake. The security guard, who was the only other person in the virtually empty building, had not yet switched the elevators to public access; it was still keycard-only permission. Guess who doesn't have a keycard. The door of the elevator slid shut, which is when I discovered that the button wasn't working. None of the buttons were working. I was trapped. No way out. Pulled out my cell phone - no signal. Go figure. I'm not claustrophobic, thankfully, but this was not my idea of a good time. I had no idea what to do, and no idea if the security guard even knew that I was in the building. So I just get pressing buttons, hoping they would magically start working and let me out. I debated for a few minutes about pressing the emergency button, but decided not to for a while, maybe after 10 or 15 minutes. But luckily for me, after 6 minutes in the elevator, the security guard switched it to public access and up I went. The rest of my shift was largely uneventful.

The reasons I tell this story are a) because this is the kind of stuff that happens to me, and I think it's funny and b) because as I was walking down the stairs (no more elevators for me for a while...), I was composing a blog post in my head of how to describe what had just happened to me. I do it without thinking. It's a habit that started back in Jordan once I started writing about my adventures - something would happen, and I would think of ways to write it. On many occasions in the last year or so, I've found myself walking somewhere, thinking of how to write about my adventures, how I would want them to be read.

Many times, I get into a lull, I feel like living in the States just doesn't hold as many adventures for me, like there's not as much to be experienced here as there was overseas. I find myself longing for the days of unpredictability, when there was so much to learn about a culture and a people from my day-to-day interactions. I get bored by my academic life, by the same routine, day in, day out. I want to travel, I want to see new places, to meet new people. But then there are days like today that remind me of how much there is to be experienced here. I live in a melting pot of people and cultures, and there are so many opportunities, if only I would venture out of my comfort zone again and find them.

Which brings me back to my question - Why now? I feel that in ways, writing about my adventures caused me to notice and appreciate them more, which I think is really important. So I think it's time to start writing again, to pay more attention to the great opportunities I have in front of me rather than spending my time wishing I was someplace else. Plus, it will give me a chance to write about some of the crazy stuff that's gone on in the past several months - like how I got married two weeks ago!

To sum up where I am now, I am finishing up my second semester of my sophomore year, majoring in Global Studies with a concentration on the Middle East, working at a Middle East Area Studies center, and getting involved more in my church community. I'm newly married to an incredible man who is also my closest friend, and I could not be happier! And so it begins, a new chapter of life - a new adventure.